Work Text:
Coriander was no place for a Valkyrie.
Lenneth had spent only an hour in the run-down village, and she felt she knew everything that there was to know of the tiny town. It was a desolate place that had succumbed to greed and fear, selling away its own future for enough to eat in the present. Someday, soon enough, it would be gone, and no trace of it would remain.
She did not sigh; there was no need. This place was not worth the regards of the gods. There is nothing here, she thought. Why did I come? Surely there is no one here who is worthy.
Once again she closed her eyes, focusing on the whispers in her soul, listening for anyone who might be near. But there was nothing - no one's soul spoke to her in this place, and was it truly any wonder? This was a place that even the monsters and undead of Midgard had long since forgotten. Hunger was the only evil there, and soon enough a place like this would die out on its own; there were no heroes there. If there had ever been those with heroic souls there, they had long since left.
She sighed. Truly, she did not know what had brought her there. Freya would scold her for wasting her time there, no doubt, as she had in Gerabellum.
That place... she had gone searching for any who might be worthy of Valhalla, and had found only misplaced anger. The girl who'd thrown a rock at her... she had never come close enough for Lenneth to see her face, but the shame and fear had been clear enough in the way she had run at once. And then, there had been that young man in the copper armor, the one with the haunted green eyes.
Those eyes... why did they make her feel so sad and lost? As if she was a mere mortal, wracked with guilt... but guilt over what? He was so kind to her, and so gentle, and yet she felt as if she had committed some strange sin.
But the gods could not sin, she reminded herself. Even if they could, why would she feel such things before a mortal? If anyone could accuse her of sin, it would be the All-Father. She was being foolish... but it still plagued her, even as she walked away.